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How This App Is Helping 100,000 Brits To Speak A New Language

Brits have a bad reputation when it comes to speaking foreign languages, but things might be changing... The winning methodology behind the Babbel language learning app has convinced 100,000 Brits to break the mould and take the first steps towards multilingualism.

We Brits have a reputation for being pretty shoddy language learners. Babbel is out to change that, and we’ve already come quite a long way. The best thing is, we haven’t even had to kick up too much of a fuss. All we needed to do was develop a simple, convenient and elegant way to learn a new language. As ever, the proof is in the pudding. Worldwide, well over 1,000,000 delightful human beings (of which approximately 100,000 are Brits!) are currently learning one of fourteen languages with the Babbel apps, and making some impressive progress. A recent study by researchers from the City University of New York and the University of North Carolina demonstrated that Babbel learners required just 15 hours of study to cover the requirements of one college semester of Spanish.

The product appears to be pretty convincing: you can learn any time, anywhere, on a device you carry around with you at all times anyway. So now we just need to convince you to actually start learning a language. To do that, we enlisted the help of three Brits who’ve done it already. Meet Ben, Shammi and Sadie. They learned languages for very different reasons — work, love and travel — and reaped huge benefits from doing so.

Ben

"Had I not learnt German, I would never have landed my dream job. That would never have happened."

Shammi

"I spoke a language which I was still learning, and I met the love of my life. I felt different. I felt empowered."

Sadie

"If we hadn’t learnt Spanish then we wouldn’t have had this opportunity to meet this lovely, warm family and have that authentic experience — and it’s all because we learnt the language."

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Ed M. Wood is originally from Wells, the smallest city in England, and now lives in Berlin. He studied Psychology at the University of Southampton before working as a teacher and translator in Spain, England and Germany. He then undertook a MA in Political Science in Bath, Berlin and Madrid. His main interests lie in the areas of language, culture and travel. Follow him on Twitter.